Jane Fonda Reveals Which Movie Inmates Recognized Her From in 2019

Jane Fonda says no one recognized her in prison — until she mentioned Jennifer Lopez.

Despite her Oscar-winning career and history of participating in political protests, Fonda recently told Ted Danson and Woody Harrelson’s podcast Where Everybody Knows Your Name that no one even knew who she was while she was behind bars in Washington, D.C. in 2019.

The actor spent one night in jail after attending a climate change protest. (Danson was also arrested along with Fonda for participating in the protest.)

“I ended up somewhere else, with a lot of other inmates, black women, and that was really interesting,” Fonda told Danson on the podcast episode, which was released Wednesday. “They didn’t care who I was. They had much more important things to think about — and none of them had seen any of my movies.”

“Oh, Jennifer Lopez, yes — they’ve seen ‘Monster-in-Law,’” she continued. “I pulled that card and they were slightly impressed, but not completely impressed. They came back and immediately told me what they were struggling with, which was survival. It was an eye-opener, I’ll tell you.”

Fonda played a wealthy matriarch in the 2005 comedy The Mother-in-Law Monster who is determined to prevent Lopez’s character from marrying a family member.

Elsewhere on the podcast, Fonda reflected on her arrest and noted how much her reality differed from the people she was in prison with, saying, “We’re white and we’re famous, and we’ll never really know what it’s like to be black or brown in this country.”

She also told how her fame allowed her to enjoy certain benefits while in custody, including having a guard “stationed outside” her cell while she heard “nothing but screams” coming “down the hall” from much less privileged prisoners who she assumed were suffering “psychotic breaks.”

“Guys are screaming and shouting and banging on doors, and you realize, ‘They should be somewhere else,’ like a mental health facility,” Fonda said. “They shouldn’t be in jail. I was the only white person there.”

Fonda has been arrested five times while protesting climate change in Washington.

Still, the 86-year-old said on the podcast that being arrested for protesting “still matters” and that “there’s something very liberating about engaging in civil disobedience” to fight for “your deepest values.”

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